Acer Windows Phone 7 devices coming Autumn 2011

An Acer spokesperson has confirmed to Pocket-lint that Acer will be joining the Windows Phone 7 party this autumn, with a September or October 2011 launch planned.

At the tail end of last year Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci stated that although the company was focused mainly on Android, Windows Phone 7 devices were being worked on and said that "if we look at Windows Phone 7, today, I think we see the same opportunity you can see on Android in terms of customisation."

Some reports emerging from Mobile World Congress indicated that perhaps Acer had waned with its WP7 enthusiasm, but that is not the case according to our source, whose proposed launch date would coincide nicely with the big Windows Phone 7 update (codenamed Mango).

It could also see the Taiwanese giant going head to head with Nokia in the Windows Phone 7 market - we expect the recently announced Nokia/Microsoft partnership to bear its first fruit around the same sort of time frame.

Has Windows Phone 7 had the sort of impact that you would have expected or will it take the first big update to put it on a par with the likes of Google and Apple? Or, is Microsoft still way behind in the mobile OS arena? Give us your thoughts using the comments below.